I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

My theory is that they decided to infodump everything right here in hopes of getting a [movie] franchise out of this, with all of the Animus stuff out of the way, this is basically Assassin's Creed 1, and considering all of the people out there (my brother-in-law included) that never get sick of Assassin's Creed, there is definitely an audience for it.

But I might be wrong and this is another case of pretentious director/producer/writer/etc mistaken as talented.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

The film is funded by Ubisoft itself they wanted to expand into a gereral media company and this is what they think people liked about the Assassin Creed games.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future

It's funded by Ubisoft, that provides the answer to every possible 'why would they do that?' question.

I find the timing of this movie rather hilarious. Announced in 2011, between Brotherhood and Revelations when the series was riding high, in the time since public interest in the series has more or less died off and the film finally comes out.

"Recommendation: Skip it. Play the games. Well, a couple of the games. Like, maybe the second one and, I dunno, the one with the pirate ships, probably."

Get Assassin's Creed 3 free on Uplay, even if it's not quite up to AC:4's level of quality (though to be fair it's hard to compete with pirates) it's free and it's good. Sure there's that modern day stuff but it's not bad. As for the movie I have friends who have seen it and told me it was bad and they're fans of the games. Shame they take a series about assassinating people and then make the bit that its in the title the tiny minority of the movie.

Assassin's Creed is an apathetic movie. It doesn't seem to care about much that's going on, and it doesn't seem to care if we do, either. It's got a confusing plot, muddled or non-existent characters, choppy action...

Soooo it's basically just like the games? One could argue that this is indeed a fantastic adaptation, then. Hey-ooooohhhhhhh! :P

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Or actually being a Badass Subtle Assassin:

I would assume anyone who actually wanted that would be playing Batman: Arkham Asylum since the AC games are flamboyantly over the top swashbuckling throwbacks.

Caramel Frappe:Sure I liked Suicide Squad and found it entertaining but the movie was still crap. It only got a pass because of the likable characters but if we looked at it through a critic's eyes, the movie had more flaws then the amount of stains you'd find in a Walmart's bathroom.ss

My local Wal-Mart's bathrooms are a far superior experience to the live action Suicide Squad.

Kind of sad about this. I've been a fan of Michael Fassbender since his turn as Azazeal in Hex. I was going to watch this since I figured he wouldn't be in something completely dumb. Now I have to consider if he's worth sitting through a standard crappy video game flick.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future

It's funded by Ubisoft, that provides the answer to every possible 'why would they do that?' question.

I can see the Ubisoft board meeting now.Exec #239-B:"Assasin's Creed 2, in this movie, the audience has to climb towers that we put in the theater and scan QR codes on the backs of random chairs with their phones in order to unlock the whole movie! That will ensure people like it!"

My theory is that they decided to infodump everything right here in hopes of getting a [movie] franchise out of this, with all of the Animus stuff out of the way, this is basically Assassin's Creed 1, and considering all of the people out there (my brother-in-law included) that never get sick of Assassin's Creed, there is definitely an audience for it.

But I might be wrong and this is another case of pretentious director/producer/writer/etc mistaken as talented.

I'm just going to throw in that while I've had more patience with the series then a lot of people here(which is why I'm ambivalent about new games), my feeling when hearing about a film was: So is it going to be good bad or just terrible?

And it looks and sounds like it's just terrible. I'd say I'm disappointed but that requires me to have the expectation of it being good in the first place.

Admittedly, this is the first time I can remember seeing a movie review where the title is basically self-censored swearing. Bravo.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future

It's funded by Ubisoft, that provides the answer to every possible 'why would they do that?' question.

I can see the Ubisoft board meeting now.Exec #239-B:"Assasin's Creed 2, in this movie, the audience has to climb towers that we put in the theater and scan QR codes on the backs of random chairs with their phones in order to unlock the whole movie! That will ensure people like it!"

CEO:

Or having to log onto Uplay in order to watch it.

I'd worry that I'm giving them ideas, but I'm fairly certain at this point there's nothing Ubisoft wouldn't do to try to get people to use their shitty frontend. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Ubisoft Employees are required to log in everyday to keep their jobs.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Or actually being a Badass Subtle Assassin:

I would assume anyone who actually wanted that would be playing Batman: Arkham Asylum since the AC games are flamboyantly over the top swashbuckling throwbacks.

You do know Assassin's Creed was a thing before the Arkham games even came out.

I swear all of you forgotten how popular Assassin's Creed was back in the day, you are so blinded by the games current state of mediocrity.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Money men, dear boy!

It costs a fraction of the amount to film a movie in a "futuristic" room that's really a concrete warehouse, than rent out sections of a historic city in Europe for shooting rights. No producer in their right mind would consider shooting what is said to be a sci-fi movie in a period drama location.

So, they probably knew about the issue of the past events losing tension because we know the ancestor will live long enough to at least have kids.

So why don't they just set the movie in the past? No Anamus link up, just show the events of the Assassin's in this or that time period.

Then, if they REALLY want to, in a sequel, or at the end of the film, they can reveal all the stuff we saw was memories being explored in an Anamus. Maybe put in a few "glitches" in the movie to hint at it too.

This really could have been good. I'm sad that I never expected it to be though.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

I would assume anyone who actually wanted that would be playing Batman: Arkham Asylum since the AC games are flamboyantly over the top swashbuckling throwbacks.

You do know Assassin's Creed was a thing before the Arkham games even came out.

I swear all of you forgotten how popular Assassin's Creed was back in the day, you are so blinded by the games current state of mediocrity.

This was a great franchise.

The good Assassin's Creed games are good. They have the same relationship with subtlety as the Eroll Flynn Robin Hood films; that is to say, they wouldn't know subtlety if it danced in front of them stark naked.

Samtemdo8:I swear all of you forgotten how popular Assassin's Creed was back in the day, you are so blinded by the games current state of mediocrity.

This was a great franchise.

Great Franchise is over egging it somewhat, the first was a flawed but good game, two was excellent, three was a complete mess and Black Flag is one of the best games of the last ten years. The other sixteen spin offs and interquels are completely disposable.

The real defining feature of Assassin's Creed is that Ubisoft has released twenty AC games in nine years, more than two games a year! That's not flogging a dead horse, that's taking a foal, running it to death, shooting it to make sure, beating the corpse with increasingly big sticks until all that's left to do is run soupy remains and bones through a steam press to get one last ounce of usable fat, then shooting the steam press and beating that since it's still got some horse in it.

Samtemdo8:I swear all of you forgotten how popular Assassin's Creed was back in the day, you are so blinded by the games current state of mediocrity.

This was a great franchise.

Great Franchise is over egging it somewhat, the first was a flawed but good game, two was excellent, three was a complete mess and Black Flag is one of the best games of the last ten years. The other sixteen spin offs and interquels are completely disposable.

I don't know, I don't find Brotherhood disposable. Its more Assasssin's Creed 2 and that's not inherently a bad thing.

There was something way, way back with the creator of the Assassin's Creed storyline going off on people not liking the Animus sections, saying they were of pivotal importance and if you didn't appreciate them you weren't really getting it (or something equivalent; I'm having difficulty tracking down the original story).

It was malarkey then, and it is now. Having the protagonist be a death row inmate rather than a bartender is kind of an improvement, I guess (sort of a chronologically offset La Femme Nikita?), but no one is remotely as interested in the crappy, improbable science fiction trappings as they are in the parkour-ing guy in the cool hood with the spring-loaded blades at his wrists running around in the trappings of rose-colored historical tourism.

I'm sorry Fassbender couldn't get a good movie out of this, but from the choices that were made, it doesn't sound like that outcome was a surprise.

What would've been cool, is if the movie was about the RETURN of the assassins. Imagine that the Templars have gotten everyone under their heel, and the Assassins have been stopped. The protagonist stumbles onto plot starter motor, triggering the plot. Then he starts to fight back, but he has to be careful. No teachers, only the creed. And by the end, he inspires a few others. Starting narration being one person reciting the creed, and at the end, the few other people also state it but saying 'we' instead of 'I'.

I had hopes for this movie, I mean the movies for AC2 were great, but apparently Ubisoft don't actually know how to write a story for the AC games, which makes sense since we play the same bloody plot every bloody time!

Silentpony:I'll never understand why someone would greenlight an Assassin's Creed movie and have the vast majority taking place in the present/not-too-distant-future. No one, and I mean no one, plays Ass Creed for the bullshit Anamus bits. Its all about being a Pirate on the high seas, singing shanties as you close in on that British destroyer and its cargo vessels full of spiced rum and salted meats.

Or actually being a Badass Subtle Assassin:

I like you. I miss badass subtle assassins instead of big bombastic pirates in a game bout assassins

So, like always, it seems all movie reviewers are either pretentious, joyless, or a combination of the two.

I've now seen it twice, and it was awesome. Granted you can't see it in vacuum, since it leans heavily on presumed knowledge from the games, but so what, I've played them, and I loved them, and I love a story that assumes I'm smart enough to put 2 and 2 together, without spoonfeeding me (I guess that's why some people find it "confusing").

And yes, I also love the games (horror of horrors on this site, someone who actually loves the Assassin's Creed games, instead of toeing the party-line that they're apparently boring).

So, I saw it today and...it's bad, okay? The plot is bad, the acting is bad, the dialogue is bad, the CGI is bad, the cinematography is bad, it's bad-bad-bad-bad-BAD!

Not terrible, mind you, and if I had the inclination I could go in-depth to describe how and why it's bad, while giving credit to the stuff that actually does work. It's not the worst VG-based movie out there, but it's bad, okay? Kind of startingly bad, since a Ubisoft IP (Prince of Persia) gave us a pretty decent VG-based movie, if not an outright "good" one, whereas this is a step back on every front.

It makes no sense, yet isn't nonsensical enough to be entertaining. (I love Battleship in an MST3K sort of way, full disclosure.) You have assassin guy removing his finger, then using sword gauntlets that don't make use of that fact, Assassins who drop the actually iconic white and red look to go with bog standard stealth grey, the fight scenes take place in dingy, smoke filled rooms with both sides wearing dull colors, the animus is a mechanical arm that's supposed to let you mimic the action of whatever you're remembering, except it can't do the forward rolls your ancestor did constantly, but that okay because even after it breaks, you don't walk yourself into a wall as your ancestor is walking around for reasons, centuries old assassin equipment is in perfect working order for, again, reasons, none of the .guards carry so much as a side arm, I'm supposed to believe an extremely white dude is on death row for killing a single pimp, the Templars were going to use an alien doohickey to, I dunno, rewrite everyone's DNA or something, and this whole mess of a plot is started because a couple of extremely white people decided to be the only white family in Baha California.

Seriously, if they decided to hide out in Saskatchewan, they'd have never been found.

The animus is especially nonsensical, since it's an obvious gimmick to give the audience eye candy. It doesn't even make sense within the confines of the universe, since, IIRC, Desmond never needed such hardware to give the Templars what they needed. All he had to do was lie down. And if he's mimicking his ancestor's actions, how the hell does it account for horse-riding?

In what little defence I can give this film, I can believe that Callum is on death row, since it's established that he has a criminal record prior to killing the pimp. But in addition to what you point out, I have to ask, why the hell is Abestergo letting Assassins wander around the facility, and even let Callum's father hang onto a blade? I mean, they're Assassins. ASSASSINS!